Here’s another piece that I strongly disliked, seemed to be unable to make better, yet eventually figured out how to “fix” in such a way that it actually became one of my favorites! A true testament to there being “No Wrong Art”! 😀

At first, I had spread the molding paste right over the top of the metal “flower” to the left, but I didn’t like how that looked. In cleaning it up and playing around, I discovered a new technique — leaving a sunken border or “moat” around a metal piece. What fun!

I soon found this little moat to be difficult to make look good, if only with the particular paints I chose.

I was aiming for a candy-cane stripe look. This was semi-decent when wet…

… but looked rather junky/ ugly when dry…!

This piece sat forlornly on my art table until the night I played with moss and made Camo Man. I noticed that the red moss looked rather good against the colors of this discarded piece.

But even after I glued down the moss and gave it a nice glossy finish coat, the ugliness of that “moat” could not be denied…!

While taking pics outside on a sunny day, it occurred to me that some Pebeo Fantasy Prisme might look good in the moat…

I added some eggshell white to cover up the hideousness, and balanced it by adding a bit of it in a few other places on the piece.

Finally, once the Pebeo was dry and its honeycomb-like effect fully developed, I rubbed on a touch of gold pan pastel here and there, resealed the piece, and found that I now LOVED it…! Who knew?!

And now the closeup of my little “Coral Dreams” has become somewhat of a mascot for this site…! WOOT! 😉